Dominion

by Greg F. Gifune

  “This guy’s out of his mind,” Bryce muttered.

  “You’re right.” Bedbug reached around in his pants pockets until he found a roach clip. “That’s the catch. You can’t know this shit without being crazy. It’s the trade.” He fastened the clip to the roach. “But then crazy’s got nothing to do with truth.”

  Daniel ran his hands through his wet hair. A headache was creeping up from the base of his neck into the back of his head, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. “Do you ever plan to tell me what you found on those hard drives?”

  Bedbug fired up the roach. “Sorry I can’t condense everything down into a convenient little moronic MTV sound-bite with lots of blinking lights and dope music clips, but stay tuned, Speed Racer, stay tuned.” He exhaled a burst of smoke then coughed for what seemed an eternity. “You cats know anything about quantum physics?”

  Daniel had heard the term before, but knew very little about the specifics. He shrugged wearily.

  “OK, dig it.” He dropped the clip into an ashtray. “Newton came up with the whole gravity thing, yeah? Changed history, made him famous. Only problem was, the thing you don’t read about in textbooks is that Newton had no fucking clue as to how gravity actually worked. Newton brought earth and space together but could never explain why they were connected or how the whole thing worked, he only knew it did. Lucky for him the scholars and scientists of the day decided to play along and not question him on it. But then when Einstein came on the scene he came up with the whole behavior of light deal, and explained what the hell gravity was and how and why it worked the way it did. And there’s Maxwell, who figured out the whole electromagnetic angle, also world-changing, so we can’t forget him, of course, but Einstein’s General Relativity, as he called it, makes him the big man on campus, yeah? Well he had this other idea about a single theory being able to explain the whole universe and how it works. He called it ‘The Theory of Everything.’ OK, brilliant dude but not so good with titles. Irregardless, as dip-shits who don’t know that’s not a word would say, the last part of his life Einstein fell out of the loop in some ways and got to be considered a has-been because he wasn’t up with the times as far as a lot of other scientists were concerned. He was working on this other theory, trying to come up with a way to combine all the laws of the universe into one all-encompassing deal because basically, he didn’t just want to make sense of the universe, he believed it had to make sense. He believed in God and believed God didn’t trade in pandemonium. But at the same time a bunch of other brainiacs were working on a relatively new theory, one that involved quantum mechanics and that challenged a lot of what Einstein believed. Max Planck first initiated the study of quantum physics in 1900. Fascinating cat, check him out. Now back to Einstein. His General Relativity dealt with big things, like planets and universes and shit, but quantum mechanics focused on small stuff, like atoms. Now with the other deal, the laws were totally different from what we already knew, because they discovered that when you break shit down and get to the sub-atomic levels, the really miniscule-in-size stuff, it’s a crazy-ass world. Whole new set of rules, because things don’t behave or react like they do in the larger world. When you get things down to microscopic sizes, everything is governed by chance, probability, one outcome or another. The thought behind it was, they could all be happening at the same time, these probable outcomes, all happening at the same time in parallel universes, got me? Einstein thought this was bullshit in terms of the real world, because in his mind the universe was structured and organized and consistent. It had to have order. God would have given it order, he thought. But quantum physics deals with chance and probability, where anything can happen—and does—often simultaneously. In other words, at the atomic level things can exist or happen in more than one place at the same time, which is of course impossible according to the laws of physics that rule our lives. So at the end of the day, Einstein was wrong, at least on the sub-atomic level. Maybe he was right about God actually existing, but he dropped the ball on how God had designed the game. Stay with me, kids, ’cause now it gets freaky.” He spun in his chair, hit the keyboard. The skull vanished from the monitors and was replaced by squiggly colorful lines floating against black backdrops. “The whole quantum thing led to something called the String Theory. A lot of big minds think it’s all a bunch of crap, but just as many think it’s real.” Bedbug smiled again, this time giggling a bit. “Some of us know it is. See, in the larger world, things move like solid objects, like a ball, yeah? Where as in the smaller world, things flow and move more like waves. These little pieces of energy strings vibrate kind of like the way strings on musical instruments do. The sound a bass makes, for example, as the strings are played and vibrate, in a sense exists at various points in the room all at once. Think of a wave rolling across the water. A wave goes to and gets to the same point all at once, all from different points along the wave but all at the same time, yeah? The wave exists from one end of itself to the other, but with different positions along the wave, one just as real as another, with all those points existing simultaneously. Same principal, because the String Theory states that everything in the universe is made up of these things and that they’re at the very heart and soul of all reality, producing a world of chance and probability, one where many things are possible—all things, in fact— depending on where in that wavelike vibration you are, because when you break it down, you’re at every point of that wave, all at the same time. You’d have to be, it’s still just a single wave, yeah? But there’s a catch. Always is, right? Try this on: the discovery of alternate realities and numerous multiple dimensions. You do the math. I know you can’t, sorry that was cold, but I can, and trust me, it adds up. Welcome to reality, ladies.”

  “OK thanks, professor. That was riveting.” Bryce turned to Daniel. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of Doctor Who.”

  “Good reference, Bruce!”

  “It’s Bryce.”

  “Who gives a shit?” Bedbug sat back in the chair again, hands locked behind his head. “What I’m talking about is the very nature of reality and creation, you dim fuck. Different points of the same energy—the same soul—stretched out over numerous realities, yeah? The computer and the things in its chips, the origins of those chips, is just a bridge, a portal to the rest of creation. Same way some drug trips create that bridge. Same way we were able to create that bridge in laboratory settings through deprivation tests in tanks or through lack of sleep. Same way we all do it to a certain extent every time we dream. It alters consciousness, opens a door and forms a bridge. People sit down at computers and create what they think are alter egos for their little chat sessions and transfer their thoughts, exchange them through the electrical impulses in it, us and running through the fabric of the universe. But what they don’t realize is that what they’re creating are exactly that, alter egos in the truest sense of the word. Alter ego. Latin, yeah? Other self. Of course they’re already there, the same way there’s a main pool of consciousness out there everybody taps into. Somewhere deep in the midst of it is something kind of close to free will, but for the most part, this shit’s already determined, already played out in a game of probability and chance but played out at the same time in all its varied forms. Now with this new technology we think is so revolutionary and fresh, those doors are opening every day, those bridges are being built all the time. Think about how many people in the world right now are using computers, interacting with artificial intelligence. And think about how more advanced it gets every day. Go outside, look at the lights in the city, all that electricity and electrical power, all of it coursing through the city, the people in it, the planet, the technology. Think of all the people wired to something right now in one way or another, it’s all one huge grid that holds our energy…and theirs. That’s why the walls are getting thinner and they’re getting stronger. What used to happen in isolated incidents and controlled settings is everywhere now. Your house, your office, your car. We’re strapped i
n and hard-wired, only no one’s exactly sure to what or to who. Blows your fucking melon, no?” He offered an apologetic expression. “This is far out shit, I grant you that, and it’s a bitch, because once it gets in your head you can’t get it out. Once you open your mind, expand it, and allow this shit in even as possible reality, it fucks with you something fierce and you find yourself thinking about it and not being able to stop. It drives you crazy, real honest-to-goodness nuts. But when it’s all said and done, ramblers, it’s just science.”

  “More like science fiction,” Bryce scoffed. “You’ve had too many acid trips, pal.”

  “Hey pant-load, no sweat off my stones if you believe it or not.”

  No longer sure what to believe, Daniel felt himself reeling. Crazy and convoluted as Bedbug’s ramblings sounded, much of what he’d said had also struck a chord in him. Memories of his conversation with Audrey and the things both she and Brad Shaffer had said Lindsay suffered just prior to her death replayed in his exhausted mind.

  She mentioned something about some odd dreams she’d had.

  “You expect us to believe Steve and Russell are two different people?” he asked.

  Did she tell you what they were about?

  “Two parts of the same person. Soul, if you prefer that term.”

  She was being followed in the dreams, stalked.

  “But trust me,” Bedbug said, “if Russell whacked out his wife, odds are this Steve dude’s already long dead too…or gone from here anyway.”

  By who?

  “That’s the problem. You never know what’ll come though: dark, light or something in between.”

  Herself.

  Any playfulness that had existed in Bedbug’s expression prior slipped away into the darkness around him, devoured by the shadows there. “Not all realities are friendly.”

  It’s not me. Tell him it’s not me.

  A contemptuous laugh ruptured from somewhere deep in Bryce’s throat. “Gorton murdered his wife and now he’s here in Boston on some demented mission. He’s alive. He’s just out of his goddamn mind. He’s a loon.”

  “Gorton provided a bridge. Russell crossed it.”

  Bryce was about to continue the argument but Daniel cut him off. “Help me understand this. You’re saying this bridge it…it allows them to somehow bleed over into our world, our reality?”

  “Yeah,” Bedbug said. “Only they don’t just bleed over into our world. We bleed over into theirs too. The choice to engage or not engage is there for both. But if you do embrace it, if you do let them through, you’re on your own. No telling what you might connect with or where you might end up. I haven’t had that much personal experience literally interacting with them myself, only a little, but I know that once they or us cross that bridge it weakens us and them, because things are slightly different, yeah? We’re out of our natural element and so are they, almost like being on a planet with enough atmosphere and oxygen to breathe and survive in, but still being lethargic, disoriented or adversely affected due to the change in what we’re used to. Theoretically, a subject would have to be there…or here…a long time before that wears off.”

  “This is absolutely ridiculous,” Bryce said sourly. “This is all bullshit.”

  “You’re right, it is. Welcome to the universe as it really is, gentlemen: chaos, total fucking chaos.” Bedbug dropped his hands, righted the chair then grabbed a mouse to his right and maneuvered it around a bit. He turned his stoned gaze to Daniel. “Which brings us to the pieces you left with me and to your lovely wife Lindsay, yeah?”

  The mention of her name in this strange, dark and foul-smelling room snapped Daniel fully back into the moment. “Bartkowski told me Gorton and Lindsay met online and—”

  “Yeah, well right about now Bartkowski’s a chunk of scorched kielbasa.” Bedbug began typing, his fingers moving deftly across the keyboard. “If your wife and Gorton did their thing online neither one knew what they were playing with or what they were really creating and letting through. By the time they did—if either one of them ever truly did know—it was too late. But here’s the razorblade in the apple, trick-or-treaters. If your wife was carrying on with Gorton online, I can tell you this much: she didn’t do it on your home computer, her laptop or her PDA. There was no trace of him, anything to do with him or anything that even approached that kind of thing on any of those drives. They were all clean. Any other computers in the house?”

  Daniel shrugged. “My laptop, but I only used that for work. Lindsay never used it.”

  “Lindsay had access to other computers at work,” Bryce reminded him. “And there are a few cyber cafés in the city too.”

  “True, but given the nature of what we’re talking about here it seems unlikely she would’ve spoken exclusively to him while at work or in a café,” Daniel said.

  “Possible but doubtful,” Bedbug agreed. “Either way, I was able to find one thing, a trace of what you saw of her on your home computer.”

  Daniel watched as the monitors blinked in unison and came back dark. At first he thought they’d shut off, but then he realized he was watching the identical image of the same darkened area he had seen before, the area Lindsay had eventually emerged from that night in the computer room at their apartment. “That’s it,” he said.

  “It’s not a website.” Bedbug pushed his chair back away from the console and stood up. “It’s the remnants of something similar to a live feed. That’s the closest thing I can liken it to anyway. I’ve come across them before, but rarely ones this good outside a controlled setting. I usually find bits and pieces left but they’re old and the quality is for shit. This one’s fairly fresh.”

  Daniel leaned closer for a better look. Deep in the darkness was the vague outline of a woman. Lindsay. Just as before, through the thick darkness he was able to make her out on her knees, sitting back on her heels, head bowed and arms resting atop her thighs. But this time the image was frozen, motionless. “Were you able to determine its origin?”

  “Usually things leave tracks, think of it like an electronic fingerprint of sorts. But these don’t do that. You can’t break them down, decipher their makeup and trace them back to anything specific or even figure out exactly what the fuck they are or where they might have originated. It’s just a ghost image on the drive, like an anomaly on a photographic negative nobody can explain. Similar principal, dig?”

  “Then how can you know it’s not some program Gorton created?” Bryce asked.

  The Zippo reappeared in Bedbug’s hand. “You ride the little bus to school, dude?” He reached behind his ear for a cigarette he’d hidden there at some earlier point. “A normal program would leave typical traces that would make it easily identifiable to a badass motherfucker like myself. These don’t do that. Try to keep up, surgeon.”

  “So we know what it isn’t then,” Daniel said, eyes still fixed on the dark image. “Do you know for sure what it is?”

  “I got beaucoup skills, baby, what do you think? It’s the remnant of a bridge.”

  “The bridge Russell crossed?”

  “More likely the one Lindsay crossed.”

  “This is bullshit.” Bryce began stalking about angrily. “Lindsay’s dead, she’s—”